


In Her Swoon

by foreignkeylookup



Category: Glee
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:32:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignkeylookup/pseuds/foreignkeylookup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When I could move again, the first thing I did was open my eyes. I guess that's not surprising, since it's the first thing I do every morning when I wake up. But this was different. This time, I was dead." Vampire AU, Brittany POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: What began as an excuse to write some creepy Brittana smut turned into a story with an actual plot. Whoops. These ain't your Twilight vampires. Vampires aren't real and most behaviors described herein would be highly immoral in real life.
> 
> Rating: Explicit sex, violence, and gore. Trigger warnings: Dubious consent. Character death.

When I could move again, the first thing I did was open my eyes. I guess that's not surprising, since it's the first thing I do every morning when I wake up. But this was different. This time, I was dead. It wasn't what I was expecting. I mean, being dead or opening my eyes. What's the first thing you plan on doing when you die? Nobody had ever asked me, probably because it was the kind of question that only I would ask.

I don't remember how I died. I do remember being dead though. My senses came back to me, one at a time. Hearing first, I remember my family's voices. Then feeling. I felt somebody cut me out of the clothes I died in. Change me into something new. I don't know what clothes they were, because somebody had already closed my eyes. Hearing, feeling felt different than they had before, but that makes sense. I'd never heard or felt anything when I was dead before. They felt better. More. I just remember these sensations, but at this point, there was no me to put them together, no me to think about them.

I think me surfaced when Santana stood over me at my funeral. Like I needed to orient my consciousness around somebody else before I could put myself back in my brain. That's when I realized I was dead. _I am dead,_ I thought.

I had done a lot of thinking about dying a couple of years ago, when Coach Sylvester wanted to shoot me out of the cannon. What would it feel like? Would it be scary? Who would miss me? Would I miss anyone? Would I fly out of my body? Would I go somewhere else? But here I was and now I could start to answer all those questions.

Santana stood over me, and my new self slid into place around her. I listened to her with my new ears and felt the air with my new skin and my new self put it all together. It was like painting a picture. Or like the way that a dolphin clicks around the ocean. I've never been a dolphin, but I imagine the way that everything came together in my head was even better than what they can do. Like an image, but it was much better than that.

_I am dead,_ I thought, _because Santana is crying and shaking and holding herself up by putting her hands on this thing I'm in._ And I realized I was in a coffin, and the scene came to me, the beautiful image, of Santana, standing alone at the front of a room, trying to hold herself up. I felt and heard the vibration and the rumble of other people in the room, and I realized, they were all back there, giving her space. And I thought that was even more beautiful, because Santana was so scared to show her feelings sometimes.

My coffin must have sealed out a lot of what I could have sensed in that moment, and that's probably a good thing. The way everything came through my brain was so, so much. More than anything I'd ever felt before in this world.

Even through the box, I felt Santana's heat. I sensed her smell, even without taking a breath. It flamed out inside me, starting on my face, behind my eyes, curling all the way down through my toes, and wrapping itself in my chest. It tightened there and I had a feeling for the first time that I've had many times since then. It's a mix of being hungry and horny and jealous and excited. I'm pretty sure there isn't a word for that.

Before I died, if I had seen Santana crying like that, I would have reached out and held her and listened to her. I would listen really hard. But dead me was different. First of all, I couldn't move. And second of all, I didn't _care_. I guess that doesn't sound nice. But at the same time that Santana was snapping the new me into place and tightening my chest, I knew very, very certainly. Santana was going to die too. The crying was only temporary. I could see that coming in the future, sometime soon, sure as I could hear Santana's heart keeping her alive.

* * *

They lifted my coffin up. I felt my body shake with the motion and my new mind pieced together all the shaking and all the smells and the heat and sounds into an image for me. I heard the rumble of my Dad, Peter, Mike, Rory, Finn, holding my coffin and walking it to the ground. Felt myself get lowered down. And then the thud of dirt, as they covered me up. And through it all, I listened to Santana's heart and all the other heartbeats, until the soil covered me up so thoroughly I couldn't hear or feel anything but the shifting of all the little dirt crumbs as bugs ran through them.

Like I said, my new senses were different. Better. I noticed things that I didn't notice before. And I had always noticed a lot.

Then I was in the ground. I waited.

It's hard to say how much time passes when you're conscious but you can't see. I wondered if I'd ever be able to move again. Was this what being dead was like for people in Glee Club? You were just frozen, like an ice block, until the end of time? No dancing? Had I missed some kind of bus? Maybe someone was supposed to pick me up. Probably when they called role, they would realize I was missing and come get me. That's how it always happened on field trips. To pass the time, I thought about Santana and the feeling that I got when new me surfaced at my funeral. I liked that feeling. It felt like, like, the moment before you slid yourself down on a boy. Breathless. Wanting. Out of control. But also in control, because you're on top. The harder I thought about that new feeling, the harder I felt it.

Until, like I said, I opened my eyes. I couldn't see anything. It was dark and I was still trapped underground in a box. But I could move.

My hands twitched on top of my chest. Now that I could squeeze them, I felt that I was holding something. I hadn't noticed it before because it was the same temperature as me. With my new touch, I felt it, like the pads of my fingers were eyes.

It was Santana's friendship bracelet. I recognized her on it, little traces left behind by her skin. Like leftover heat on a seat at school. I grasped my wrist. I was still wearing mine. I slid my hands down my body. I was in my Cheerios uniform. I felt the soft, worn material against my hands, and I felt my body underneath it. I felt so good. It felt so good, partly because of the relief that I could finally move and partly because I felt different and dead and _so good_. That hungry, tight, possessive feeling got even tighter, and my muscles clenched, as I dragged my hands up my bare legs. Then I stopped. Because the first thing you do when you wake up dead is not touch yourself, even if it feels really good. First, you get out of the ground.

I held Santana's bracelet tight in my hand, pulled back my arms, and slammed them as hard as I could against the top of my coffin. And to my surprise, it cracked. After that, it was like running the mile in gym class. You go as fast as you can and afterwards you can't really remember any part of it except that it sucked. I don't know if you've ever been buried underground before, but it's not fun. I reached and I dug and I pulled myself up, until my torso was above ground. Then I stopped for a second.

It was night. But it wasn't like any night I had ever been awake for before. The ground was dusted lightly with snow. And everything was...bright. No, that word wasn't good enough. There was a big difference between night when you're alive and night when you're dead. It was bright and everything moved. I felt like my brain was sparking in a way that it never had before. Everything looked patterned and swirling.

I would say it took my breath away, but I realized then that I hadn't been breathing, which was weird, considering I had just dug myself out of the ground. I tried it. I puffed my chest out and blew my cheeks out like a fish. I let the air out slowly. I felt absolutely no desire to inhale again, the way I might have if I had just surfaced from the deep end of a pool.

I smiled. _Yup. I'm dead._

I kicked my legs and pulled myself the rest of the way out of the ground. I stood up. The ground that I had just emerged from looked messed up, so I jumped on the soil to pack it back down. There. Just like making my bed. I put Santana's bracelet on my wrist, next to my own.

Just as I finished making my bed, I was seized by the Feeling. It was worse than it had been in the ground. I needed...something. What was it? I could almost feel it, at the corners of my new senses. No. I could feel it. And hear it and smell it. What was it? I started walking toward it. As I walked, I realized that the new me extended even into the way I moved. I felt like I was gliding. Experimentally, I did a few twirls. Briefly, I wondered why there weren't more dead people dancing, but that smell wafted back into my brain and my heart clenched in my chest. I couldn't pay attention to anything else. I kept walk-gliding. It was so easy to guide myself towards it. I left the cemetery. Went through the streets of Lima. It was quiet. There was no one around. I moved fast, faster than I ever had when I was alive.

There were houses. The streetlights didn't do too much to brighten the street. Not that it made a difference to me. I heard her heart beat before I saw her. Smelled her, rich and floral. It was obvious she didn't hear me coming up behind her. I guess that's because she wasn't dead. I felt sorry for her. But mostly I felt the Feeling.

I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't know how she could help me with it. So I said, "Hi Rachel". It was the first time I had spoken since I had been dead. Speaking without air felt strange. But somehow my new body knew how to do it. My voice sounded different too. No rush of wind. The words just gliding past my throat, the same way I had walked across the ground to get here.

She turned around.

Everything felt really still for a second.

Her face dropped. "Oh my God. _Brittany?_ " I watched her silently, while she tried to figure out what was going on. "I thought you were dead! Are you okay?" I nodded. I wasn't sure what to say. I was dead. And okay.

Then I started moving. I didn't recognize what the Feeling was driving me to do, so I just went with the part of it that I was familiar with. The horny part. I walk glided up to Rachel, and put one arm around her, and the other hand on her face. I think I must have moved really fast, because she suddenly looked terrified.

"What are you doing?" I just looked at her eyes. She was so short, compared to me. Shorter than Santana. Definitely the shortest person I had ever held like this. "Brittany. What is this? Let me go." She tried to push against me. I didn't let her. "Let me go! Something is wrong."

See, I think alive me would have let her go. I really don't _want_ to hurt anybody. And I was obviously scaring her. But dead me had a different idea. My body needed something. The Feeling was so strong and I needed to satisfy it. The heat from her body honestly felt like it was killing me again. But it wasn't, it was just heating me up.

"Let me go. Stop it! Stop it." Rachel kept pushing against me, trying to turn her head away from me, to kick her legs out, to affect my balance, but she couldn't. I was too strong now.

I lowered my head to her ear and said, "Rachel. Be quiet. I need to..." She stopped fighting me, but I couldn't finish my sentence. Getting close to her made me feel something. My new senses could hear her heart racing under her skin, and with each pulse, I could practically see her veins flush with it, with...blood. It was strongest at her neck. I could even see it in the dark. It sparkled, like a stream...

So I sank my teeth into it.

When I fed Lord Tubbington all that glitter and he pooped a candy bar, I told Santana that I ate it, and she rolled her eyes and said, "That's gross, Britt." But I explained that what bodies do is never gross, _especially_ when there is magic involved. And I think that's probably true still. Blood is sticky but it's what keeps things alive. Everything that's alive has some blood in it and that's pretty amazing, don't you think? And now that I know what being dead is like, I can tell you that there is definitely some magic in being alive. Probably in being dead too. But blood seems like a way you can touch life, because you can't touch ideas. You can only touch things that represent them. That's why people get each other wedding rings. Or friendship bracelets.

When I bit her, I broke the skin easily. I was surprised by that. It was like cracking the top of my coffin. Simple. Rachel started and whimpered, and then her body melted into mine while I held her. I was surprised by that too. I mean, I've bitten people on their neck before, but I'd never drawn blood. I would expect it to hurt. But Rachel stopped fighting me altogether, and just, let me.

My tongue darted out and licked the wound I'd created. Her blood was already streaming out of it, so there was more than enough for a swallow. _Oh my god_. It was so good. I pulled Rachel tighter to my body and kept drinking. It was like there was nothing between us. I felt her hips against my hips and her breasts against my breasts, and I hadn't ever really held a girl this close and this tight except Santana so it felt new and good and _hot_. But then it seemed like there was really nothing between us, like I had stepped into her body with my own. I felt the heat of her breath against my neck, and then between licks, I would take a breath too. Even though I hadn't needed to breath before, I needed it now. And even though I could hear and feel and taste her heart beating, all of a sudden I realized that mine had started beating again too. It was like I was dead, but I was alive, and it felt so good to feel like I was alive with all of my new dead senses. It felt even better. How could I keep feeling better and better even though I had died?

Rachel and I were hurtling towards something powerful, and I didn't know what it was but I had to get to the end of it, I had to.

Rachel was limp and she wasn't holding herself up at all anymore. Her breath slowed and it rattled in her throat and then her blood stopped too. I took the last of it I could find and swallowed. I felt so good. I felt like I could do a thousand back flips, or jump 10 feet in the air, or run 10 miles in 10 seconds. I was alive and dead and my heart was beating and I could breathe or not breathe, and I could do whatever I wanted.

I felt more powerful than I had when I became senior class president, that's for sure.

I let Rachel go. She collapsed to the ground. I didn't care. I was content to just stand there, while my heart beat and my breath heaved. Until it slowed and I was dead again.

_Wow_.

* * *

Rachel was on the ground, looking pale and...well, dead. I guess she was dead. I guess I killed her. I hadn't even noticed that that was what was happening. There was such a pounding in my ears and that Feeling was holding on to my heart so tightly it had started to beat again. I felt like I had put my head under a waterfall and pulled it out again. But the Feeling was gone. I could think again. I felt less compelled to act not like myself. Or was I acting like myself, now that I was dead? It was confusing. It was hard to tell what was me and what was new. To avoid it, I turned my attention to Rachel. Now that she was dead, I needed to wait for her to wake up. But I couldn't wait here, on the street in Lima. We had to go somewhere, somewhere where no one would find us. I thought I might have trouble explaining that I was dead, and so was Rachel, and everything was fine because being dead wasn't as bad as you think it was.

That seemed more difficult than explaining things to Lord Tubbington. Because he's a cat and I'm a person, and we didn't always see eye to eye, you know. I think it must be the same being a dead person explaining things to an alive person.

I gathered her up in my arms. Her head lolled back. The bite mark on her neck looked ragged. Briefly, I felt a touch of pride at it. _I had done that._ I had done that and it was so easy and it had made me feel so good.

I wasn't used to being dead yet, and so I wasn't used to thoughts like that. They still made me uncomfortable. I pushed it away.

Which way to go? I needed somewhere quiet. I walked as quickly as I could, quick enough to strain even the new power of my dead legs.

It took me like 20 seconds to walk two blocks. I threw Rachel over my shoulder, the way my dad used to carry me up the stairs when I was a little kid. I remember his shoulder digging painfully into my stomach as I laughed and screamed, half mad that he was hurting me and half delighted that he was picking me up. Having been recently dead, I decided that Rachel would forgive me if I was hurting her like that. She'd tell me in a day or two if she minded.

I broke into a jog. It felt normal to my body but my head hadn't adjusted to moving at these speeds yet. I felt like I imagined being strapped to the bottom of a racecar felt. Really, really fast. In not much time at all, the street lights were gone and I was out past town, where the farmland started to stretch out. Where the sky got really big. The plants poked through a thin layer of snow, making the ground look like someone had dragged a wrecking ball through a building made of cornstalks. I guess that's kind of what happened.

My eyes took it in. With Rachel's body weighing on my shoulder, it was probably better to go across the fields. That way if someone came across us on the roads, they wouldn't get the wrong idea. Where I could, I ducked into the patches of woodland.

There was a cell phone tower in the middle of a field. That would help me figure out where to go. I dropped Rachel at the foot of it and started scaling the handhelds. Not super high, just high enough to see out past the landscape. I didn't need to go very far. My new eyes cut through the air. Up so high, I felt a little bit like an eagle. Then, I spotted it. A shed, out by a pond. Probably a place where they kept hay in the summer. We didn't need much, just the promise of a roof and a door and some privacy. That way, Rachel didn't have to wake up in the ground, like I had.

I scrambled back down the tower, jumping down when I wasn't too high up anymore. I picked Rachel up again and started moving towards the shed I had seen.

When we got there, it wasn't perfect. I mean, it was a shed. But it was next to a pond and my eyes were still bright with the glow of my new vision. I mean, for being the first place I was ever going to spend a night without adults around - that wasn't a hotel or the backseat of a car - it was okay. The inside was empty, except for one corner filled with some boxes and some farm equipment. I laid Rachel propped up against a wall, supported by one of the boxes. Her limbs had started to stiffen out, so she stayed up easier than you might think. Easier than I thought she would, anyway.

I stood up and smiled. She looked so peaceful. "Good night, Rachel," I said, before I walked out and shut the door - gently - behind me.

I stood next to the pond, and looked out over the fields. I don't think it was just my new vision that made everything bright. There was snow on the ground and not many clouds that night. I smoothed my skirt out and sat down. The nice thing about being dead is that I didn't have to worry about dying from the cold. I grasped my knees to my chest and hummed a little. The wind rustled my hair. It was quiet. I thought about Santana and I thought about my family. I wondered if they missed me. They'd be so surprised when I came back. I couldn't wait to tell them that being dead wasn't as scary as they thought. I mean, waking up was scary. That's why I had to stay with Rachel, for when she woke up. I could help her not be scared. It's not like we were best friends or anything, but I couldn't just leave her there, alone, to deal with the Feeling. Plus, I suspected that Rachel wasn't like me. She wouldn't see the good parts in being dead, not right away. She'd probably say something like, "Brittany, how could this happen? I've worked for _years_ to perfect my breath control and now I can't even breathe! This has serious implications for the timbre of my voice!" But that's Rachel. She's always alarmed about imaginary things.

After a while of watching the sky, I got a new feeling. It wasn't The Feeling. It was a different one. It was less like a feeling, more like...a thing I had to do. I stood back up and went back to the shed. I found a chair and propped it against the door. I was glad the shed had no windows. That way, no one would bother us. I didn't think anybody would.

I got on the floor next to Rachel. It wasn't so bad. It was good to have a friend there, in a strange place. It didn't even bother me that the floor was hard. I guess I was tired, cause my eyes shut and I passed into sleep without trying too hard at all.

* * *

When you're alive, and you sleep, it's like a little death. You lie there and don't think of anything in particular. But your brain ticks away for you, building its own little worlds. Sleeping when you're dead is not like that. You're just dead. When you wake up, you sort of have the sensation of what happened outside of you - the sun rose, a bird sang a song somewhere close by, and far away, too far away to worry you, cars drove on a road - but inside you? Nothing.

Even though I like most parts of being dead, I do miss dreams.

* * *

I waited for Rachel to wake up. I waited for 3 days. I'm pretty patient. I waited for Santana. I took care of Lord Tubbington. I babysat my sister. I think most people would lose their patience with those three, but not me. Now that I was dead, it was easier. I could really just sit there, really still. I made a game out of it. I never felt the same urge to twitch that I had felt when I was alive. All my movements were just, deliberate. That included my not movements too.

During the time while I waited, I always slept through the day. I guess I had started to realize what had happened to me after the second day I slept through. I'd never been much of a night owl. Early Cheerios practice got me up at dawn, sometimes before. You'd go to sleep early too if you wanted to be cheerful by the time Coach was yelling at you through a megaphone. But now I slept right through the sun. It was strange. I had always loved the sunshine. On the surface of my brain, I thought, "Gee, I miss the sun." But deeper inside, in the very center, it felt right to only be awake at night. It was that deeper feeling that alerted me to something being different inside me, that maybe I wasn't just dead. Maybe something else had changed.

I think it was too cold for bugs, but the body started to change. And after 3 days, it occurred to me that those changes hadn't happened for me. No. I'd gotten stronger, paler, colder, more sensitive. But I hadn't actually started to feel dead. And I didn't smell dead. Rachel did. Her body was _decaying_. I remembered it from an experiment we had done in science class.

The worst part was that it didn't even gross me out. I knew that it should but it didn't. And every once in a while during those 3 days, I'd stare at the mark on her neck. And I knew that, that, I had made it with my teeth. Without thinking about it. Because I'd been hungry. Hungry for, for...

In that moment, I hated her. I had hated her before and I hated her right then. How could she have been outside? How could she be the one who I did it to? And then, twisted, I hated her too for all the other feelings that bubbled up in me. The pride I had felt at killing her. The way that finishing her off had been like sex. The way that I had enjoyed the power of it.

Worst of all, the sense of justification. That she had deserved it. Hadn't she? The things she let Finn do to Santana. The things _she_ had done to Santana. And to me. The way she ridiculed us when she should have known better. Didn't she deserve it?

"I hate you," I said to her body. It didn't say anything back. Because she was dead. I wasn't dead. She was dead. "I hate you. I hate you." It felt good to say it out loud so I did it again. "I hate you, Rachel Berry." And then all the anger that I felt, just came out of me. Hard. Through my hands. I grabbed her body like it was 40 pounds instead of however much she really was and I heaved it against the wall. It made a sickening smack. I picked up the tools and the other random _crap_ in that shed and I threw it all against the walls. The metal bent over the force of my throws. God, I was so much stronger. I didn't cry. I just kept throwing things. Finally, I walked up to a wall, and I just started punching it. Hard. And every time my knuckles split, not enough blood came out. And then I'd watch it seep back into the skin and the split would heal itself right back up. And I'd punch the wall, until it happened again.

I knew what I was. I'm not stupid.


	2. Chapter 2

I stopped eventually. I cried. Big, wet, sloppy tears. I didn't cry like that very often. But I usually didn't get angry and punch walls. I usually didn't sink my teeth into Rachel Berry and drain her blood out of her body.  The fact that it was different from usual made it even worse.

Rachel wasn't going to wake up. And I was going to keep being a vampire. After a certain amount of time, I was going to need to eat again. I was going to need to take care of myself. I needed to take care of things.

I couldn't wear this Cheerios uniform forever. I needed clothes. I needed a place to live. I needed to do something with Rachel's body. The smell of her body didn't bother me, not exactly, but I could tell it was strong.

For the first time in a while, I thumbed at both the friendship bracelets on my wrist. Santana. Her name breathed into my thoughts. I felt it spread like smoke over my brain and settle there. I wanted her, so badly. I missed her. I felt overwhelmed by the things I had to do. It felt like I had graduated and that it was time to start being a grown up. I wasn't ready. I wasn't going to have been ready in June.

But Santana could help me. Why couldn't she help me? Actually, why couldn't anyone help me? As long as I didn't eat them, couldn't I go back to my house and my room and live there? Obviously, I couldn't go to school. But I could go to night school. I probably was going to have to take some extra classes anyway. I'd go to school and graduate. And I could still see my friends and still ask my mom for advice and still see Santana.

I stepped outside and re-did my ponytail.  I squared my shoulders and felt what time it was.  I probably didn't have enough time to see anyone. I wanted a whole night to explain things. Something told me it would be harder than I thought it would be when I just thought I was dead. Now I would have to also explain that I needed blood to...was live the right word?

I had already decided that I would not say that I knew what happened to Rachel.

* * *

I jogged to Santana's. Like before, I didn't sweat. Just moved calmly, quickly over the cold ground.  Like a ghost. I guess I kind of was. Casper. But not so friendly. It was easy to avoid people. At night, Lima was a pretty sleepy town. Plus, I could hear their heartbeats. I just stayed away, even though the Feeling was starting to wrap around me again. Especially because the Feeling was starting to wrap around me again.

When I got there, I stilled. I could hear them. Santana's mom and dad took steady, deep breaths. They were asleep. I bent my head and listened.

There she was. She was awake. As soon as I realized it, the Feeling grabbed me in the center of my chest. I had to get closer. No, I didn't. I couldn't. What if what happened to Rachel happened to Santana?

I lifted my hands to the sides of my head and squeezed. Doing that made me feel like I was in control. Rachel was the first time I'd felt it. Now I knew what it was. I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't do it again. I'd just look at her through the window. I'd be so quiet. She wouldn't know I was there.

I climbed up the tree outside of her window. It was less tall than the tower I'd climbed before. I straddled a sturdy branch and leaned back, then put one foot up.

I could see her on her bed. She was holding one of her throw pillows, and staring at the ceiling. I made my muscles not-move again. It was the first time I had stared at a living person since I had died. I had looked at Rachel, yeah, but that all happened so quickly.

Santana didn't do anything. But her body did. And I noticed. Sometimes her shoulders tightened as she grabbed her pillow tighter. I watched her throat twitch when she swallowed. I watched her eyelashes flutter as she blinked occasionally, nice and slow. I listened to her breathe. There was a tension to it and I knew that she'd been crying.

I tried not to but I listened to her heartbeat. I tried not to but my eyes noticed the flush up her neck as her body pumped blood. I tried not to care. Really I did. I tried to stare at her lovingly, not hungrily. But it didn't work. I think you know that.

I could've watched her forever. Until the sun rose anyway. Eventually Santana's eyes closed. Her heartbeat slowed. It was getting close to sunrise. My body felt that call to rest.

I decided to do something reckless. I just couldn't wait. I was so lonely. I needed to leave behind one thing, one thing so that I could feel like I'd done something since I died other than accidentally kill Rachel Berry.

I unclasped her bracelet from my wrist, and jumped down to the ground. Santana had put this here right around the time we started talking in ninth grade. I hadn't watched Clarissa Explains It All, but Santana was obsessed with the re-runs that she had watched the summer before. She'd found clips on YouTube and made me watch them too. At the time she said that she wished her parents would let her let a boy climb into her room whenever he wanted, but since Clarissa and Sam were just friends, she guessed a girl would be fine too. I was just glad to have Santana showing me things she liked so I could like them too.

The ladder was easier to control now. I made sure it didn't tap too loud against the windowsill. I climbed up, and as soft as I could, pushed Santana's window up. The air inside the house rushed against my face. It seemed burning hot. And with it came the scent of Santana.

She smelled like best freaking steak in the world. Like at the end of Cheerios season when you're finally allowed to eat whatever you want again  _and_  you just finished your period. I almost crawled inside the window just to get close to it, to sink my teeth into it. I almost cried when I realized I couldn't. I'd tried to put my hand inside. It just wouldn't. I just couldn't go inside. Santana was safe. From me.

I pushed her bracelet in without putting my skin in. It got far enough in that I could close the window the few inches that I had opened it. I jumped off the ladder and put it back away, less carefully than I'd taken it out.

I ran back to my shed, glad to get away from the way I wanted to taste Santana.

I didn't want to go back in, with Rachel's body still there, but I didn't have a choice. The sun was coming up and it was time for me to hide. I would take care of all of it. Tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

The day passed. I heard it go by.

 

* * *

The first thing I should have done was gotten rid of Rachel's body. It was going to get difficult to move. I didn't think I'd be able to just pick her up without some part of her falling off. But I didn't want to take care of that. I wanted to go to my house. I wanted to see my mom. And I wanted to change out of my Cheerios uniform.

I was tired of everything feeling so different. It had been nice, that first night, where I thought I was suddenly magical. But now I just wanted to go back to real life. 

I wanted to look nice so I went to the pond. I guess the water wasn't still enough cause I couldn't find a clear reflection of myself. I used the pads of my fingers to make sure there was no dirt on my face, that my hair was smooth.

I tightened the laces on my shoes, extra tight. I liked the way it made my feet feel safe.

Instead of running, I started walking home. It was still fast, but I was scared. I didn't want to admit it but I was afraid of what would happen there.

It was hard to imagine though, that I would feel the Feeling about my family. As I walked, I shivered, thinking of the pounding in my chest and my head and between my legs when I had taken Rachel. It was hard to imagine that I could feel like that about my dad. Or my mom. Or my brother. Or my sister. It felt gross just thinking about it. The way it made me want to gag made me feel better. If it grossed me out, then nothing would happen.

When I got there, I stood outside for a while. Did I knock on the door? Just knock on it and say "Hi."? I felt like, I couldn't. It would be too much. The question of how to do it was answered for me though. I saw Allison's face peek around a curtain. Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. I let my face curl into a small smile, unfolded my arms, and gave her a short wave. "Hey," I said, even though she couldn't hear me. I could hear her though, through the house. Her heartbeat was so fast. "Brittany!" Her face disappeared and her footsteps sounded to the door. "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it." 

She opened the door. "I knew it," she said. "I knew you weren't dead. I mean, I didn't know it, but I  _hoped_  it." She ran outside into the cold. I stretched out my arms and I picked her up. She kept going, "And you're here and you're moving and that means you're alive because dead people don't move!"

"Course not!" I lied, because I wasn't really thinking. I was paying attention how it was different to be dead and to hold her. It wasn't like being close to Santana, where I had felt like if I didn't get it, I would start grinding my teeth. But it was there. I held on to the part of me that was totally grossed out and put her back down. "Sweetheart, aren't you freezing? Let's get inside."

"Brittany. There's so much that's been happening. Mom and Dad were trying to pack up your room but I wouldn't let them. And I've been feeding Tubbington! Mom said I could take care of him since you and Peter weren't here to do it. And guess what else?"

I put my hands on the side of my head. In the house. I wanted to be in the house. I wanted to hear all these things, but I wanted to hear them in the house. "I'm gonna guess everything, Al, but let's get inside." 

"Okay, Brittany!" She grabbed my hand and started marching me towards the door. This wall of panic reared up inside me, like a scared horse. "Let's get inside!" And just like that, it melted away. "Let's go to your room. You're gonna stay, aren't you?" And I stepped inside my house, and shut the door.

I felt better. There were flowers and cards in the entryway. The smells were stronger, but familiar. I could smell Lord Tubbington, the laundry detergent we used, the casserole my mom had made that night. I heard Rory's breathing, in his room. He was listening to music. It sounded sort of bottled up. He was probably listening to it through headphones.. My parents weren't there. All that in an instant. I squatted on my heels and looked right into Allison's eyes. "Allison, this is really important. We can't tell Rory that I'm here yet. Cause I want to tell Mom and Dad first. Don't you think they should be the first to know?"

Her eyes were still so wide. She looked solemn, and nodded. "Yeah. Okay."

I smiled but it felt more like I was baring my teeth. "You're the best."

Like I was on a roller coaster, I suddenly felt awful. I felt the Feeling. I wanted her. I wanted to eat my little sister. But no. I wanted to stay more. I wanted my life back.

"Brittany," she whispered. "Are you okay? You're staring. And you look different."

"Yeah," I managed to get out. I cleared my throat even though there was nothing to clear. A habit left over from being alive. "Let's go to my room and put everything back."

"Okay. But remember...we have to sneak quietly. Cause of Rory." She was just like me. When it came to being sneaky, she learned fast.

I straightened up and smoothed out my skirt. "You lead the way, midget." This wasn't like what I wanted at all. I felt like I didn't belong here. There were pictures of me and my family everywhere, smiling, on family vacations. On hikes. In front of Disneyland. Peter and I running on the beach toward the camera. My eyes went straight to the redness in my cheeks, and the way the sun bounced on my face. Would I ever feel that again? My little sister was with me and I should have been so happy to see her and hugging her like crazy. But I couldn't. It was like she wasn't my sister anymore. She was so tiny, I didn't even need to use her neck. I could pick her up and pin her against a wall and attach my mouth to her wrist. Or above her knee. Even as I thought it, I wanted to try it. I knew it would be good there. Different than Rachel Berry. I could drag it out, really enjoy it.

If Santana was like a steak, Allison was like a chicken breast. She would probably be totally delicious. But ultimately, she was resistible. I just wanted to hang on, to this little piece of myself that said I could do this. It was the first time I'd tried to be with an alive person. It would just take some getting used to.

We tiptoed past my room. The house was quiet. We were quiet. The door to my room was shut. Allison opened it.

My room.

Allison shut the door.

Everything kind of looked the way it should. There was a box by my desk. They'd probably been trying to clear up some of the papers. My diary was by my keyboard. I looked at Allison, intensely. "Have they been reading that?" I quaked out. When I dropped my voice like that, without air moving past my throat, my new voice sounded like a growl. She shrugged and threw herself on the bed.

She looked at me and played a little bit with the bedposts, pulling and pushing herself against them, rocking back and forth. "You seem different."

I crossed my arms. I looked at her arms as they shook her body. They seemed so breakable."I am, a little bit." As soon as I said that, I knew. I couldn't stay. I didn't belong here anymore. I couldn't go back to my life. I couldn't be with my family. It was ridiculous to even think of it. Suddenly, I wanted to do this as fast as possible.

I went to the closet and pulled out the biggest Cheerios duffle I could find. I threw it on the bed, next to Allison and unzipped it. I didn't think too much, the way I did if I packed for a trip. I just started cramming as many clothes as I could in there. I don't think I even grabbed one hat.

As I started doing it, Allison started crying.

Shirt, sneakers. "Brittany, what are you doing?"

Bra, socks. "Brittany, you said you were staying!"

Jeans, underwear. "Brittany!" With that last wail, I heard Rory turn the volume on his music down. I flew to the bed, vampire fast, put my hand over Allison's mouth and held her down with the other arm. She tried to kick and her eyes got wide. As I held her, I felt her hot skin and saw her veins flush. Heard her heartbeat get faster. Somehow I managed to keep my voice level. "Be. Quiet. Be quiet.  _Now._ " And then, she must have gotten scared because she tried to bite me. The pain flared up in my hand and I ripped it away from her mouth. 

We both stared at it cause she'd broken the skin. The skin pulled itself together and looked good as new. Then she really started screaming. She was so  _loud_.

I grabbed the duffle and ran out the door. I didn't even care that it slammed. I could hear that Rory was coming to see what was going on. I just needed to be faster than him. I knew I could be.

On my way out, I saw Lord Tubbington. As soon as he saw me, his back arched and he hissed like crazy. In my panic, I just. I don't know. Everything was so crazy and I'd been fighting the Feeling and I just. I picked him up with the hand that wasn't holding my duffle. He tried to scratch me but it didn't matter, not really. I only needed one hand, anyway. I ripped at him with my teeth. His hair got in my mouth, so I spit it out, but I got just enough, just enough to get out of there without turning around and holding my sister by the back of her neck while I drank Rory Irish dry before turning to her and doing it. If I hadn't done it to Lord Tubbington, I would have done it to her.

I dropped his body on the steps as I ran out the door, my duffle over my shoulder. When I got to the shed, I threw it down. It tapped what had been Rachel Berry's body. As I'd predicted before I left, it wasn't in a state to be moved. It burst, just a little bit. I felt like I should want to retch but I didn't. I killed my cat and I almost killed my sister and I was pretty sure nothing was ever going to be the same again, not ever, not ever, not ever.

I curled up against the wall, as far away as I could from Rachel and clutched my knees and cried and cried.

I couldn't tell if I could actually hear my sister still screaming, all the way in town, or whether it was just echoing around in my head:

"You're not Brittany! You're not Brittany!"

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I have gotten this far and neglected to thank the people who encourage me to do awful things to teenaged Glee characters. So thank you, S, K, and A. Please do not post sections from this on my Facebook wall. A gentle request.

I didn't do much. I couldn't even take care of the body. I'd been meaning to do it for ages but I just couldn't. I was dead. I couldn't go back to my old life. I sometimes wished that I was really dead. Really dead and not coming back.

Sometimes, I would think, _I have to do something_. But I couldn't figure out what that something was. Clean my room? Do my homework? There was just, nothing. Nothing to do. I didn't care.

I think it was like that for days. Or nights. Sometimes I wouldn't even go outside. Every time I did I felt like I could still hear my sister screaming and sometimes on the air I could catch the smell of, living things. Cows, maybe. I could taste their fur and it reminded me of Lord Tubbington. When that happened, I could feel my face get tight and I'd duck back inside.

Most of the time, I felt like I was outside my body. It reminded me of the time that Santana had grabbed us each a bottle of a cough syrup and told me to chug it. I didn't even really know what it was going to do, but if Santana did it, then I could too. It was weird because like, I had drank cough syrup, and everything felt like it was also in syrup, and I was watching us from some syrup covered camera in the corner of the room. Mostly I just liked trying new things with Santana, even if they made me feel awful. But now she wasn't here, and I also felt awful.

Except, I didn't, not really. I still felt that fine control over my body. Not like syrup at all.

A fly made its way into the shed, probably looking for Rachel. It looked for her. I looked for it. Then, so fast, I pulled it out of the air, and crushed it between my thumb and forefinger.

_Okay._  That was actually pretty cool.

 

* * *

 

The next night, when I got up, I changed out of my Cheerios uniform into new clothes. It felt so good. Even though I hadn't showered in days, my body didn't feel grimy, like it would have if I had gone that long without showering while alive. Just the act of changing into clothes was enough to make me feel renewed.

Tonight, I decided, it was time to _do something_. I knew how vampires worked. They lived forever. If I was going to live forever, I was going to do at least one or two interesting things. 

Tonight, I decided, I was going to find somewhere to live that was not a shed.

But first, Rachel. I took one of the boxes and emptied it out. I picked up her body and kind of tried to fold it in.  I had to use some force.  But she fit. I was glad I didn't have to cut off her legs or anything. That was one good thing about being a hobbit; it made it really easy to hide her body.

Despite my strength, the box was kind of awkward to carry. Still, all I wanted to do was take it outside. I threw it in the pond. It bobbed for a few seconds, but sank. The water covered her up. I imagined the water filling the insides, surrounding Rachel's body. Maybe the lid would come off a little bit and some fish could nibble on her. That would be nice for the fish. I think whichever one got a bite of her vocal cords would be extra lucky.

 

* * *

I went back to Lima. I didn't really have a plan for how to find a new place to live, but it seemed like a good place to start. I had a hood on my jacket, so I put it up. I walked people speed. I didn't see anybody. 

I was going to have to learn how to be alone. Like being awake in the night time, all my thoughts that I thought out loud screamed out in protest, but deeper inside, I knew I'd be okay. It already felt normal, even though I hadn't had a conversation with anyone but dead Rachel and my sister in days.

Still, my feet took me somewhere familiar, the Lima Bean. I saw Tina and Mercedes inside. I ducked around to the side, where nobody walked and I stilled my body. I listened. They were talking about Santana.

"...worried about her." That was Tina.

"Well, she said she's on her way. We'll ask her. If she needs someone to talk to, she'll talk." I snorted. Mercedes liked to see the best in people. But that's not how you get Santana to talk. You don't ask. You wait. Santana has to come to you on her own.

"Hey!" Tina's voice sounded unnaturally bright.

Oh. _Oh._ Santana was here. If it was possible, my body got even stiller. 

"Hey."

That was the first word I'd heard her say since I had died. She sounded different. I mean, partly, she sounded different because my ears could hear every little detail of her voice. So, on one hand, she sounded richer, like a million little hers talking at once. But on the other hand, she sounded flat. Suddenly I realized that, the way I'd been dealing with me being dead, everyone else had too.

"How are you?" Tina asked gently.

"How do you _think_?" Santana sneered. Mercedes made a noise with her breath. "Come on, Santana. We're all going through a hard time. First Brittany, then Rachel..." She trailed off. "Well, it's more than most people have to deal with."

I shifted to a place where I could see at least Santana. She looked beautiful. More beautiful than she had the night I had watched her. It gave me a funny feeling. I put my hand on my heart, which was also now kind of my stomach.

She frowned into her cup. I hope she wasn't drinking coffee. She'd be up too late if she was.

"It's different. They haven't even found her body. I mean, for all we know, she ran away with the circus to be part of their World's Smallest Woman act. Good for her, her dreams of being on stage are probably all coming true." Even though it was supposed to be a joke, she sounded extra bitter when she said the word dreams.

I could see Tina's shoulder shift. I think she was looking at Mercedes. Her voice was really quiet. "I really hope so."

Nobody said anything for a little bit. Santana bit her lip and stared more intently into her cup. She looked guilty.  Probably nowhere as guilty as I felt.

Mercedes started speaking, start-stop. Like my first driving test, when I left the parking brake on.

"I know you and Rachel weren't best friends, but you and Brittany were." Santana started to look upset, but Mercedes cut in. " _And_  you were dating. We all lost someone special, but Tina and I wanted to make sure you were...doing okay. You seem a little distracted, and we just...want you to know that we're here for you."

"Yeah," said Tina. "To listen or watch a movie or hold your hand or...whatever you need."

I felt strange listening to this. Partly because it felt weird to listen to how upset Santana was without me. Partly because listening, or watching movies, or holding hands, or _whatever_  was what _I_ did with Santana.

Santana's expression shifted. It looked like she was smiling but I knew this face.  "No, I appreciate that. Thank you. I'm sure we're all going through similar grieving processes. Because losing someone you're in love with and losing someone who you barely paid attention to are kind of the same."

"That's not true, Santana. We were all friends! And you two were on the Troubletones with me."

"Yeah, well, you didn't even ask her yourself. You had to get me to make a wish on a leprechaun to do it. Because you knew if you asked her, she would wonder what in the hell you needed from her. And she'd be right."

That wasn't true. Mercedes and I were friends. I might not have joined the Troubletones if Santana hadn't asked me, but I wouldn't have wondered why Mercedes asked me. This was just Santana being mean to stop people from getting too close, where they could pull her in and hurt her.

But then she said something where she was the worst kind of mean, the kind where she stopped herself from getting too close. Her face got serious, and clear. Her eyebrow raised itself, like it was determined to show that it was better than all the other eyebrows. To be honest, it kind of was.

"You guys are sweet. But there's only half of year of high school left, and then what? I mean, even if Brittany hadn't died, we were going to have to break up anyway. I'm going to college. Who knows what Brittany would've done? It was going to be over soon anyway. Now it's over sooner."

Santana. That's _mean_. 

I couldn't help it. It wasn't just the way I took the world in that had changed, but also the way I reacted to it. I was so mad. I was so mad. Santana was going to break up with me? Just like the Feeling was a mix of hunger and horniness and _needing_ , this feeling was even more mixed up. It was a mix of the Feeling, and hurt, and anger, so much anger.

The craziest part is that I didn't even move. I just felt all the anger bleed out around me, surround me like a storm cloud. I was the center of it. I didn't need to move. I just needed to listen.

Tina and Mercedes were just as shocked as I was. Tina's shoulder moved again.

"Santana, if that's really the way you feel, okay. But if this had been Mike, I - "

Santana cut her off. "For _fuck's_ sake, not every fucking relationship is some pale reflection of you and Empress Wu. You're in love, that's special, that's great. Well, I'm in --" She breathed. Her eyes flicked to the side and down and back again. Her voice got soft. "I _was_ in love too. But that's over now."

The storm cloud tightened and crawled in my body. I ran out of there. I don't even know if anyone saw me.

* * *

I ran so fast and hard, I got out of Lima before I even thought much about where I was going. I tracked across the fields. Cornbeans, soystalks. I came upon another town. I went around it. I think I ran for an hour.

Being tired is different when you're a vampire. You don't stop because you're heaving for air or because your muscles strain. You just...stop. Or feel weak. More dead, I guess. Something inside of you says: you can go this far, but no farther. For me, that Santana storm cloud, the one that said, "I'm not in love with you anymore." was pushing me closer to that line than I had been since I had gone home.

Then I came to another town. My heart knew how to push that stopping point further away. So I slowed to a walk. No, a creep.

I was on the hunt. Like my cat. I learned from the best.

* * *

I liked Rachel better than Lord Tubbington. I wasn't sure if it was because she was a person or because she was a girl. I hadn't really tried anyone who wasn't a girl yet, except Lord Tubbington, so I wasn't sure if he tasted more like a cat or like a boy. But I liked the way that Santana had smelled, the way Rachel had tasted and I had had to work so hard to not notice either of those things about my sister.

Was it like sex? Would I like boys too?

* * *

Sometimes when Lord Tubbington caught something, he'd kill it, super fast, and other times, he'd tease it out. Make sure the mouse knew that he was watching her. Then he'd catch her in his paws, bat her around. She would run and run, but she'd never get away. Sometimes without meaning to, she'd run straight back into him.

Tonight I felt more like the first one.

* * *

I found him, walking on the street. He was my age, tall, wearing a varsity jacket. More like Finn than Karofsky. I made sure we were alone, then appeared quickly by him. "Hey."

"The fu -"

In real life, he was stronger than me. But now that I was dead, I was stronger. I threw him to the side of the road, in the ditch. He hit the ground and winced, but didn't have time to react before I was already on top of him, straddling him. He had the good sense to look terrified. I felt bad about it, but it was kind of a turn on. Normally it was me in this position, some boy on top of me, without enough strength to really push back. He pushed but I didn't budge. I just grabbed his head and exposed his neck. I bent down and licked it, right along the beating vein. Oh, I could almost taste it.

Despite himself, I think, he started to grow hard. I chuckled and bared my teeth. I ground down on him at the same moment I bit down.

I think it must be the case that something happens when I bite, because people always seem to lose themselves. Like, they should be thinking, "This girl is biting my neck." But instead, they rock into me, sometimes gently, sometimes desperately. It's so good. I felt the weakness from my run go away, and the storm cloud retreated and tightened until it was like a Big Bang waiting to explode. Not ready to be touched but tiny enough to go unnoticed.

That boy kept rocking and his arms went up around my back. His fingers dug into my shoulder blades. Everything felt backwards because like, he looked like the strong one but I was really the strong one. And then that feeling happened again, where I stepped into his body and I felt his heart beat squeeze my own and his lungs fill mine up with air, and then, most confusing of all, I felt his hardness press against me just as I felt myself press against him.

Oh, it felt good. It felt so good. It felt, it felt, it felt, it felt --

He gurgled and died. I licked again, three more times, placed my mouth on him and sucked hard till it was all gone. I sat up, shook my hair out of my face, and wiped the back of my hand against my mouth. I stared at him for a little. I'm sure he had been a very nice boy. Or maybe he really was like Finn. Then I didn't feel bad at all.

I turned back towards Lima.

* * *

 

After that, it was strange. In some ways, I felt calm and in other ways I felt not calm. I guess, focused. The way Quinn used to look when she was looking at Finn.

You can't just say those things, Santana.


	4. Chapter 4

I'd stay in my shed during the day, and then at night, I'd watch Santana. I'd watch her do her homework, or fight with her mom, or cry, or sleep. Every few days, when I couldn't take it anymore, I would run out of Lima, somewhere far away, until I found somebody delicious walking in the street.

I figured out pretty quickly that what Santana had said was a lie. It made the anger fade away. In its place was curiosity. Why would she say that? Why would she lie when the truth was obviously that she did still love me? I noticed it during her getting ready for bed routine. She wore my friendship bracelet every day. She took it off and put it on her bedside table. Her finger would linger on it too long. Sometimes, her eyebrows would push themselves together, and the corners of her mouth turned. I could tell she was thinking about me.

Other times, I could really tell she was thinking about me. I wished I could see it all. I'd never watched her do it before. She'd put on her nightshirt and crawl in under the covers. I might not have even noticed it, but I could hear her heart speed up. Her breathing hitched. I leaned forward on the branch, suddenly intent.

I wished I could see. I mean, I wished I could touch, but if I couldn't touch, I wished I could at least see. We hadn't done that, but the thought of it now was irresistible. What if instead of watching Santana through the window, watching her roll her body under her sheets, I was watching her from between her legs? It would be like going down on her, but with my eyes.

Her breaths and desperately hidden noises served as a soundtrack to what I thought. I imagined spreading her legs, her knees warm against my hands. At first she'd be shy, cause she's always shy the first time we do something new. I'd take one finger and stroke it along her left lip, then her right. Then I'd dip my fingers in the place where she was wettest and slide it up to her clit. That's it, three touches. Then slowly, I'd take her wrist and slide it over her stomach, down her body.

"Touch yourself, Santana," I'd say. "I want to watch you come."

Maybe that's what Santana thought about too. I'd watch as her body bent into a half-moon when she came around her fingers. Quick breaths and a tiny moan that she always tried to swallow. Only I could hear it. Well, me and Santana.

If I imagined really hard, that last breath out always sounded like my name.

Every time Santana did that, somewhere outside of Lima, sometimes outside of Ohio, they'd find somebody in the morning, pale and dead.

Sorry. It's what I had to do. You can't just watch something like that and do nothing.

* * *

Since I had heard Santana say that she was planning on breaking up with me, I felt different. I wanted to watch her all the time. For so long, I'd thought about life with Santana by my side. I mean, that's what worked about us. We could do our own thing, but. I was there for her when the commercial aired. She was there for me when I ran for president. But it's not like I was in the commercial, or she was running for vice president. It's just that, with her, I felt like we could each do anything. Like I was full of this fire that could take me anywhere.

I knew though, that Santana was different. I mean, it was the same feeling but she just thought of it differently. She needed _me_. Now I knew how that felt. Needing a person.

I needed Santana. I _needed_ her.

I didn't like it. It made me feel...not full of possibility. Like I just had two possibilities: Santana and not-Santana.

I needed it to be the first one.

* * *

There was a party. It was probably for seniors. That seemed so far away from me now. Graduation. It had only been a month since I had died, maybe. I wasn't keeping track of time too closely.

It was at Kori Kaplan's house. She was on the basketball team. I thought that was pretty funny, she'd always seemed too short to play basketball. She was like, the same height as Santana. But she was strong. I kind of wished she'd been a Cheerio. Then I could have put my hand on her skirt every once in a while. I heard her, periodically, telling people to stay in certain rooms, so her parents wouldn't be able to tell she'd thrown a party. I stood outside, in the shadows. I had to be careful not to be seen, because everyone here knew I was dead. It was cold out, so most people were inside, except for a few kids who were smoking joints in the backyard. The smoke smelled sweet. I like that smell.

It smelled like high school every time somebody opened a door. Well, like I imagined high school smelled anyway. I couldn't go to McKinley during the day, when it was filled with students. But I could tell. It smelled like body odor and musk and heat and acidity. It was a thing teenagers had that grown-ups didn't. It wasn't bad. More like a Sour Patch than a gummy bear.

None of the Glee kids was there. But Santana was. Her heart always sang to me the loudest. I'd memorized its patter, after all the nights of watching her sleep.

Over the course of the night, she drank. I couldn't tease out her smell compared to everyone else's. But I could hear the voices and I could hear her breathing.

Even though we used to drink a lot, we kind of stopped after Mr. Schu made us sign that contract. Santana made a fuss about it, but I think she was secretly glad to stop. It had started as an excuse to be outgoing, and make friends, and then turned into an excuse to kiss people, and then into an excuse to kiss me, and finally, into an excuse to let me part her legs and her folds and push one, then two fingers inside of her. But then we didn't need it as an excuse any more.

But she was drinking now. I couldn't blame her.

She didn't say much. I think she probably just wanted the drinks and the people. But since she'd come out, Santana wasn't really sure where she fit in. She didn't have much to say to them. And they didn't have much to say to her. The boys looked at her. The girls giggled at her. I heard them talking about her. It wasn't nice.

Finally, Santana came outside. Oh, Santana. You smell so good. Even when you smell like alcohol. She stumbled as she walked down the stairs. She stopped. Closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. It hitched at the last second. I knew she was trying not to cry.

She started walking down the street.

I followed.

After a half block, she stopped. "Who's there?" she whispered. If it had been anyone other than me, they wouldn't have heard. But I did.

"Me." She shivered. But I knew she hadn't really heard me. Maybe she heard it somewhere in her brain, but it must have been in one of the parts that people don't really use. If she had heard me, her heart would've sped up and she would've started shaking uncontrollably. That happened a minute or two later. Cause she got to her car, unlocked it, and put her hand on the door.

"Santana. I hope you're not going to get in your car after you've been drinking."

She dropped her keys.

I hadn't really meant to say anything. But I wasn't going to let her just get in a car and drive it. She knew better than that. I didn't always know better than that. I wasn't very good at telling the difference between a drink and five drinks, but that's why Quinn was usually the driver.

I stayed some ways away from her. It kind of helped me control myself. Kind of.

Santana turned around. She started shaking and her knees started to buckle. If I weren't so afraid of what would happen if I did, I would have gone to her, kneeled, and stroked her hair back from her face. Her lips trembled. Her heart raced. Oh, sweet girl. I couldn't. I watched her, like I had been doing for all those nights. This time she watched me back.

"Brittany." It barely came out. Her tongue licked her lips, and they parted. She tried to control her breathing. Her hand went to her chest.

I stood and held my hands together in front of me. "Just...don't drive, Santana."

"You're dead." She said it like she was making sure it was real. "I saw your body. I went to your funeral. You're dead. I saw it. You're dead. You're dead." She stopped talking, but kept shaking. I decided that she was asking me a question without a question mark. I nodded, once.

"Brittany." She swallowed. "Are you an angel?"

I looked at her, real serious. I didn't say anything. She shook her head, as if to clear it, like she couldn't believe she'd said something so ridiculous. Her right hand reached to her left wrist, and touched her friendship bracelet lightly. The heart charm wiggled. "I was so sure that I'd...left this with you." Her voice was thick. "And then...I heard about your house getting broken into. And only your clothes being stolen. And all your sister would say was that it wasn't you."

My face tightened. I didn't like to think of that night. It was me. "Don't drive, Santana."

I walked away.

* * *

She didn't know what I was. Sometimes I felt like talking to her again. Sometimes I felt like watching her, silently. Sometimes, when I'd sit alone by the pond, I'd lose myself in a fantasy. We'd see each other on the street, alone, at nighttime, and I'd give her a look, and she'd know it meant "Come here." I'd skim my fingers up the sides of her, nice and slow, not even barely touching. She'd rock back and forth, from all the wanting.

"Santana," I'd say, "Do you want it?"

Her eyes would screw shut. "So bad."

"You want it, huh? You want that feeling? Of me inside you? Or you inside me? You want me to taste you, sweet girl? You want that?" With every question, I'd move from stroking with just the tips of my fingers, to my fingers, to my palms, till I was holding her.

Then when she said, "Yes, _please_ ,", I'd imagine doing it. I'd imagine going all the way.

In the aftermath of that fantasy, Santana would rest, dead and bloodless, next to me, while I flushed and heaved and curled with all that blood magic running through me. Then some minutes later, after my high had faded, she would flutter her eyes, shake her head, sit up, and say, "Again."

I needed to learn how to do that. I needed to learn how to stop myself so that I could have Santana once, and then again and again. I knew it felt good for the people I did it to. I could feel the women grind their hips against the air while I held them tight to me. I could feel the men get hard and put their hands around my waist. Once, with a cute one, I had sucked him super slow, while I unbuttoned his pants and put my hand around him. I'd stroked him while I swallowed him. He died before he came but I don't think he was upset about it. Nobody ever said "Don't stop," but I heard it all the same.

* * *

I went to a bar. I could inhale people smells, feel their heat from being in that room with them, but I probably wouldn't snap and bite. Everyone would notice. I didn't know what would happen if they did notice - I could overpower them, probably - but I felt like vampires weren't supposed to be real and it was best to keep everyone thinking that way. They might try to stop me from eating, and I liked eating. Besides, I'd noticed that my hunger wasn't so overwhelming now that some weeks had gone by. So everyone was probably safe.

I needed to go somewhere far away, where no one would recognize me. I also needed an id. That part was easy. I just found someone who looked like me and took her id when I was done. And her money. Her name was "Jennifer Lofton", and now so was mine. I repeated it to myself ten times to memorize it. Then I repeated it with her birthday.

I didn't even know what day of the week it was, but I knew my name was Jennifer Lofton, and that I was 24 years old. I put on jeans, and a shirt. I tried to look like I didn't want to be bothered. It's hard to look like you don't want to be bothered when you look like an 18 year old blond girl. Most people assume you want to be talked to when you look like that. But I wasn't sure what would happen to my resolve if somebody started talking to me.

The Feeling was there, curling at the sides of my brain, but I didn't have to listen to it. I didn't even get carded. I sat in a bar and watched the people there, and ordered a drink, and felt very grown-up. It turns out most people were there to watch other people and see how their self-control fared among a crowd too. Only one person talked to me and I said, "Don't bother me." and then when he said, "Hey now...", I looked him right in the eyes and said, "Don't talk to me," and he shut up right quick.

I watched him leave the bar, put down the beer I hadn't been drinking anyway, then followed. When he turned the corner to the parking lot, I pounced. He seemed surprised to see me but started to say, "Didn't think you were up for talking." with a low chuckle and a casual hand on his belt buckle. I guess he thought he recognized the hunger in my eyes.

"I'm not." Without much fanfare, I took him against the hood of the car. But only for a little bit. Instead of going all the way, I listened to his heart. And something wonderful inside me, that I hadn't bothered to listen to before, told me, _"_ Stop". I let that feeling wash over me. I wasn't going to keep killing people forever, every time I needed it. I could stop.

I didn't like him, though, so I didn't bother.

Then, because I knew I could listen to that voice - if I wanted to - the next night, I went to Santana's window and did something crazy. I knocked.


	5. Chapter 5

She twisted a little in her sleep but didn't wake up. Sometimes she had trouble waking up just from noises. I usually had to touch her shoulder real soft when I wanted to wake her up. But I knew from watching her that she hadn't been sleeping well. She would wake up. I knocked again. She turned towards the window and blinked a few times. Her eyes had to focus from dream to real, and when they saw me, she sat straight up. She started shivering again, and turned her head away from me, so she was staring straight ahead.

"Hey," I said, trying to get her attention. I knocked again. She just shook her head slowly, trying to keep her eyes straight ahead. Then I noticed that her breathing was going too fast. She was terrified. In some ways, I guess, I wanted to say, "Don't be scared." but that was a silly thing to say. She didn't know whether I'd come back from the dead to hurt her or help her. I mean, I didn't even know that.

"Just, open the window, Santana. I wanna talk." I watched her fingers flex at her bedcovers. Her heart was going so fast. I remembered how it felt in the bar, to hear those sounds and not do anything about them. It was kind of nice. I mean, it was nicer to do something about it. But listening was good too.

"I won't come in, I promise. I just wanna talk." She didn't know that I couldn't come in. Not without an invitation. With the way her face looked drained and pale, I didn't think I was going to get one. That was probably for the best anyway. I was okay in a bar full of strangers, but maybe not in a bedroom full of Santana.

She pushed back the covers. One leg came out over the side. Then the other. She walked over to the window, kind of like a robot. She kind of kept her body as far away from it as she could, while she fiddled with the top and pushed it open.

When it opened, I opened my mouth so that I got a good swallow of Santana air. Don't tell, but it kind of smelled extra good cause she was so afraid. She stumbled backwards until she was back in her bed. She reached behind her and turned a light on. She pulled the top cover around her shoulders, so that all I could see was her face, looking wide-eyed.

I giggled. "Feel safe?"

She swallowed and looked to the side. The swallow was enough to make me know she wasn't going to answer. Instead she said something different: "What are you?" It came out scratchy and quiet.

I huffed. It kind of sounded like a laugh. I wanted to say, "Very, very scary." But more, I didn't want to answer that question yet. "I don't want to talk about that." My elbows propped against the rung of the ladder. "I heard what you said." She looked confused. I guess she'd probably said a lot of things in the past month. "I heard what you said to Mercedes and Tina. That you were going to break up with me when you went to school. That you weren't in love with me anymore."

Finally, she looked at me straight in the eyes, and with the tiniest little voice, said, "Oh." Another swallow. "Is that why...why you're here?"

I crossed my arms against the ladder. "Um...I guess so. Is it true?"

"I don't know. Maybe." She paused. "No. No, it's not true." I knew it.

"Santana." I looked at her, hard. "Why are you so scared? It's okay. I'm not coming in."

"Britt. You're dead. Are you a ghost, or what? It's pretty fucking scary."

Now it was my turn to look away. "I'm not a ghost. I can touch things. People can see me."

"Are you really dead? Or did you like, run away or something?"

"I'm really dead." She swallowed again and looked away from me. "Tell me why you said that."

She didn't say anything, so I spoke again. "Santana." She looked at me. "Tell me why you said that."

She breathed in. The covers around her rose and fell. "I miss you." My face softened. My heart soared. I had been waiting to hear that. I had guessed it was true but it was so much better to hear it.

She shook her head. "I don't want to hurt like this anymore. That's why I said that." I waited. "I miss you so badly. It hurts...all the time. I finally get to be with you, and then...you were gone. And it's easier to just think, well, maybe you and I would have ended anyway. And also, I didn't know you could hear me."

"It hurt my feelings."

She crossed her arms and shrugged. "I didn't mean to."

"You can just say how you feel, you know. Nobody is going to be mad at you or think you're weird for like...grieving that I'm gone."

"Um, are you gone?"

"What?"

"Are you gone? Cause from where I'm sitting...you're on a ladder talking to me." She shook her head. She kept doing that. Like what she was seeing couldn't possibly be real. "Can I see you again? Like, when you don't wake me up from sleeping, and I'm like, ready to talk to my dead girlfriend? Or at least, expecting it?"

I thought about it. "It has to be far away. I don't want anyone to see me."

She nodded. "Okay, yeah, sure. How about the country club?"

"No, Santana. Farther. And..." I paused, wanting to put this lightly. "There should be people around."

"So you don't want anyone to see you...but you want people around? That doesn't make any sense, Brittany."

I ignored the question she wasn't asking. "Can you get to Marion? There's a coffee shop there."

"Why the hell would I go to Marion, Brittany? You want me to get killed?"

I smiled big. "Don't wear your Cheerios uniform, then. It's called 'Marion on Main'. It's on Main. At 8?"

She almost looked like she was about to relax. "Tomorrow's Saturday, Britt. You wanna see each other earlier?"

"No." Maybe I answered too quickly. "Night time is better." Santana tilted her head. Her mouth fell open.

"While we're entertaining the idea that I'm here having a conversation with my totally dead girlfriend, are we gonna entertain other ideas too?" Oh no. Santana's voice dropped to a hiss. "Are you pulling a fucking Edward Cullen on me, Brittany? I can't believe I'm going to ask this. Okay, whatever. I already asked if you were a ghost or an angel. Brittany - "

"Yeah?"

"Are you a fucking vampire?"

I sighed. "I don't sparkle."

"I'll take that as a yes then. Britt. This. Is. Awesome." The covers began to drop from her shoulders. I guess she was excited, excited enough to stop feeling so scared.

"No."

"Are you kidding? You're going to be insanely smoking hot, forever."

"It's really not, Santana." I said it as firmly as I could. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Britt." I cut her off by closing the window. I heard her sigh, then laugh. I heard her hair brush against her shoulders as she shook her head. I heard her heartbeat start to slow down from its too fast beat. I would've heard her if she kept talking, but she didn't know that.

I kicked the snow while I walked back. She didn't know. She didn't know how lonely it was. How scary it was to feel so out of control of your body that you couldn't be with people. She didn't know how strange and alienating it was to be killing humans in order to survive. She didn't understand how I was different. My sister had spotted it right away. But Santana was so scared to see my face that she forgot to look under it.

* * *

I had to guess what time 8 was. I didn't have a cell phone or anything. I ended up waking up and trying to get ready before hand. My clothes were getting dirty just from being rolled up in a bag in a shed. I'd need to figure out a way to do laundry. My mom had always done mine. I guess I needed to find a laundromat. And some quarters. I hadn't really cared what I looked like, but now I was meeting Santana. It was like a date. My first date as a vampire.

Checklist: 1) Look nice. 2) Don't be scary. 3) Don't eat anybody. 4) Especially Santana.

I ended up just waiting around Marion on Main until she showed up. She smiled when she saw me but it was nervous. It really was like a first date.

"Hey."

"Hi."

We paused. I decided to break the silence. "You wanna go in?"

"Sure," she said. "Can I get you something?"

"Um..." God. Did I want something to drink? From a coffee shop? Maybe the barista. She had a piercing. I wondered if it would make her taste weird. Probably not. Unless she had a lot of them that I couldn't see. "No," I said simply.

"Can you, even?" Santana made a gesture with her hands. I think I was supposed to know what it meant.

"What?"

"Drink something."

"I dunno. I haven't tried." And then, because I was afraid that eventually we were going to get to the part of the conversation where Santana realized that I killed people, I tried to explain why. "I don't have much money."

Her eyebrows pushed together. "But how are you living?"

I stared. She blushed. It was a very beautiful thing to see, the blood coming to the surface of her skin. I'm not sure I would have noticed it, if it weren't for me dying. Then we got to the front of the line. "Small drip, decaf. And a hot chocolate." She turned to me. "I just want to see. If you don't like it, I'll drink it." The barista looked kind of bewildered at the thought of someone who had never had a hot chocolate before. I gave her a smile. Not too big.

Santana paid, and the barista handed us our drinks. I wasn't sure if it was her or the shop that smelled like coffee beans. I wondered if she was caffeinated. Maybe baristas were all caffeinated. Would caffeine even do anything to me?

I was doing a really terrible job at my checklist.

We sat down at a table. I frowned. I felt a little strange, being here in bright lights. The shop wasn't super crowded, like the Lima Bean, but the barista was here, and two small groups of kids our age who probably went to Marion.

Santana must have noticed that I wasn't feeling great, because she asked, "Are you okay?"

I didn't want her to worry. "Yes. I am okay."

"Okay. Okay. So..."

I couldn't help but smirk a little. "So..."

"Tell me everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything." She stared into my eyes, deep, deeper, deepest. That way she had.

"I don't even know where to start."

"Okay, um...where are you living? What are you doing? Just tell me about your life, Britt."

It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to Santana. I did. I missed her so bad. I wanted to tell her everything. But things were so different for me now. And I didn't think she was going to like hearing about it. It wasn't very glamorous.

"I live in a shed. Outside of Lima. It's not very nice. But it keeps the sunlight out. And nobody bothers me." I watched her face to see how she reacted. She still seemed interested. "I - " What did I do? Hunt. Watch her. "I don't do much. It's been...different than living."

"What's it - " She wet her lips and swallowed. Her eyes looked hungry. "What's it like? Being one, I mean."

"It's - it's two things at once." I couldn't remember the word for that. "When I woke up...it felt amazing. I'm stronger now. And faster. I just...move differently. It's like I didn't have to try at all. And I see things and hear things way better. I just sense things better. Like..." I cast about the room for an example. I lowered my voice. "That boy over there likes you. He started sneaking looks at you and when you walked in, his heart started beating just a little bit faster." That came out kind of creepy. "And there's a mouse in the kitchen. It's scritching. I can hear it."

"What?" Santana looked down at her coffee. I laughed. "It's okay, Santana, I don't think it's in the coffee beans." That's a lie. It was definitely in the coffee beans.

"Oh. Okay." Then she heard the rest of what I said. "That boy? Really? He's pretty cute. Yeah, I still gots this." I rolled my eyes. Still Santana. Even now that she was gay.

"Don't look, Santana." I just...didn't want her to. "Tell me about your life, Santana." We talked for a while. Well, Santana talked at me. I got the feeling she hadn't been talking to anyone much. She just talked about...life. I missed it.

After a while, her face got still and quiet. "You haven't had any of your hot chocolate, Britt."

I looked at it. I lifted it to my face. The heat through the cup felt super hot against my skin. But it didn't hurt me. It just seemed entirely unappetizing. Well, that's a lie. I had all my human memories of hot chocolate. I wanted to like it, I did. But I could feel that there was blood close by me, all different kinds and, well, it just seemed better. I put the cup down. "I'm sorry. I know you spent your money on that."

If anything, she looked delighted. But also concerned. "Hey Britt, it's okay, it's - it's probably natural for you to - whoa." She reached her hand out to stroke my arm. It was the first time she'd touched me. To me, she felt burning hot, like a fire. To her, I probably felt ice cold. Dead. "You are different," she whispered.

I'd never felt so ashamed in my life. And I couldn't even help it. I couldn't even help what had happened to me. But here it was and I couldn't do anything about it, other than be myself.

"Britt, I - I want to ask you something."

"Of course, Santana. Anything."

She leaned forward. "I've been thinking about this all day." She took a deep breath. "I miss you. I miss you so badly. And now I know that you're here, and I - want us to be together. I can't stand it. I can't stand not having you with me. I'm so sad all the time. And now I know that you're here."

I nodded. Not because I understood where this was going or because what she said was true for me too. It wasn't. But because I just couldn't imagine being without her either. I wanted her back too.

"Are we - still together?" she asked.

I thought about it. I thought about the people I had eaten over the past few weeks. The way I had licked up their necks while they shivered into my body. The way that I'd throbbed with their blood rushing through me. But I couldn't tell Santana that. Because after I'd done those things, I would rush to Santana's window and watch her, watch her, watch her all night. I could do it forever. So that was the answer then.

"Isn't this a date?" I smiled. "Aren't you paying for this hot chocolate?"

"Yeah. Yeah." She smiled and nodded and looked down at her lap. "Yeah. I love you, Britt."

"I love you too, Santana."

We let the moment pass us, but then she pulled out her cell phone and looked at the time. She rolled her eyes. "This seems ridiculous, considering I just told my vampire girlfriend that I love her, but I have to get home by 11 or my parents will flip."

"Okay."

She hesitated. "Walk me to my car? Keep me safe?" I looked away.

"I don't think I can do that, Santana." For a second, I wasn't sure if she got it, but then her heart jumped.

"Walk me to my car, anyway, Brittany."

We picked up our cups and put them back. Santana slung her purse around her shoulder. I opened the door for her. She smiled and stepped out. We fell into step as we walked back to her car. She drew her fingers down my arm, like she was testing the temperature of it. Her hand settled into mine, and I gave it a squeeze. Her heart pumped harder.

And we were alone.

I could do this. I could keep control.

Then when we got there, Santana and I faced each other and she looked at me in the way that she has. Like she's looking up at me, but also down at the ground at the same time. It's a way that girls look at people that they want to kiss. I know because Santana did it to me all the time. Sometimes I did kiss her and sometimes I didn't. In this case, I did. How could I resist?

I leaned down and she leaned up, and we pressed our lips together. It was the way we'd done it a thousand times. Except, except. I had never been able to feel it so much. The air around her practically vibrated with all the feelings that her body was feeling. And I'd never felt so still and so wanting at the same time. Kissing Santana when I was alive could be like a jolt of adrenaline straight to my heart. Now it went straight to my heart but in a different way.

I opened my mouth and licked a little line across her bottom lip. She let her mouth fall open with a little sigh. And then we were really kissing. I liked it. I liked it, oh so much. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her tight to me. I felt her hands go to my waist and ball up my shirt, then stroke my back, then my sides again, like she couldn't decide where to touch me was best. Her mouth was so hot. She was so hot. I cupped her face with one of my hands and stroked her cheek with my thumb. Could I really hold so much of her head with one hand like that? She was so tiny and suddenly I had this sense of all the power I had, again. That she let me do these things with her and she was mine, mine, mine and nothing, not even death, could take that away from me. I dragged my teeth against her lip, lightly, but enough, and I sucked - lightly, but enough. She gasped a little in my mouth and if she could have melted into me even further, she would have. But she didn't need to. She was already there.

That's all I needed. One drop. One drop of Santana. That's what I got. But as soon as it hit me, I also knew I would need it again, and again, and again. Cause she was better, better than anyone else. I wanted to push her against the car and take her, but more than that I wanted her to drive home, so that I could do it again.

So I stopped. I stopped and pushed her away, strong enough that she probably started to guess at how strong I was for the first time. She stumbled a little bit and looked glassy eyed. Her lip had one small cut on it. I could smell the blood and I knew I'd need to get out of there soon. Her eyes cleared up and she put one finger on the spot and pulled it away to see. She looked confused.

"I didn't...I wanted..."

I let out a shaky laugh. "Me too." Then I got out of there as fast as I could, to make sure that I didn't lose it altogether.


End file.
